


Sweet

by T Verano (t_verano)



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Community: sentinel_thurs, M/M, Sentinel Thursday, Sweet Tea, Upping the Ante
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2020-03-07 02:52:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18864235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_verano/pseuds/T%20Verano
Summary: Jim makes Sweet Tea, for reasons. And things change. For reasons.





	Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sentinel Thursday challenge 529: "Tea" 
> 
> Inspired by a spell of broiling days (and nights) with the ambient temperature hot enough to fry eggs while they're still in their carton in the refrigerator.

"Jim, you're boiling water." Blair sounded mildly pissed off as well as incredulous as he came out of his room and walked towards the kitchen, and Jim felt himself smirk.

"Make a detective out of you yet," he said, even if he and Blair were both anticipating things a little, since the water was merely beginning to steam vigorously and wasn't actually boiling yet. 

"It's too hot to boil water." Now Blair sounded pissed off, incredulous, and… sweaty. How Blair could sound sweaty was more than Jim wanted to think about, but somehow Blair did. He looked sweaty and smelled sweaty, too. _Clean_ sweaty, since he'd just taken — another — shower an hour ago, but sweaty. 

'Sweaty,' unfortunately, looked and smelled all too good on him. Of course, maybe that was because Jim's mental movie screen was currently showing _One Hundred and One Ways to Get Sandburg Even Sweatier, Preferably Without Clothing._ Not that Jim had anything against the shorts Blair was wearing, shorts that gave him an unobstructed view of Blair's legs from mid-thigh down, or against the tank top that offered him Blair's bare arms, barely covered shoulders, and the little patch of chest hair that was curling up over the tank's low-cut neck. Heat waves did have their uses, occasionally.

"Jim." Pissed off, incredulous, sweaty, and impatient — Blair could certainly pack a lot into one short syllable.

Jim pulled his thoughts up out of the no-fly zone and shut down his mental movie with a sigh. "It's just a warm spell, Sandburg," he said. Blair snorted, and yeah, Blair had a point: for Cascade, it was hot with a capital H. That didn’t keep Jim from rolling his eyes. "You've spent plenty of quality time in jungles where this weather would feel like a cold snap," he reminded Blair. "Or at least so you've told me. Suck it up."

"Not the same, man," Blair said absently, his attention clearly on the counter next to the stovetop, where Jim had everything spread out, ready and waiting. "You're making _tea?"_ he asked.

At least he didn't sound pissed off any more. Incredulous, still, though, and sweaty — and suspicious.

Jim rolled his eyes again. He took the pot of now fully boiling water off the burner and poured it over the tea bags piled in the big Pyrex measuring cup, checking the time on the kitchen clock. "Yeah, Sherlock, I'm making tea. So?"

"So, _why?..._ And for cripes' sake, Jim, how much sugar are you planning on putting in there?"

Blair was looking in horror at the mountain of sugar Jim had just dumped into a second measuring cup, and Jim smirked again. He checked the clock; still plenty of steeping time to go. "Why?" he said, "'Why' is for Joel's barbecue this afternoon. You made fruit salad; I'm making tea. Not rocket science here, Chief." 

"Yeah, fine, but come on. Are you actually trying to kill everybody who drinks that crap? That's enough sugar to —"

"Enough sugar to make sweet tea. I could put a little more in and really do it right, but I figure this'll be enough to put a little south in everybody's mouth."

"'Sweet' tea." Blair's tone of voice made the air quotes around 'sweet' perfectly clear. So did his raised eyebrows. "Gift for understatement there, Jim."

Jim sighed. "You never spent any time in the South? It's _sweet tea,_ not just tea that happens to be sweet."

"'Happens' to be sweet?" Blair's eyebrows were about to disappear up into his hairline, and Jim gave him a deliberately bland smile. That brought Blair's eyebrows down into a frown. "Okay, sure," Blair said, "I spent a couple of months in Mississippi with Naomi one summer when I was twelve, but we were with some friends of hers and they were into living off the land and making tea from whatever they could gather. None of them were good with bees, so we mostly drank everything unsweetened, no honey or anything. We never went back, though, since Naomi didn't like the energy."

Jim checked the clock; almost time to pour the tea into the pitcher and stir in the sugar. He pulled some more tea bags out of the Luzianne box and put them aside. He wasn't about to show up at Joel's party without at least a couple of gallons of this tooth-rotting crap.

Of course, someone there might actually have a sweet enough tooth to _like_ sweet tea.

Jim could only hope not. And since he'd volunteered to bring the drinks, and he wasn't planning on taking anything but this tea….

Revenge was sweet. Even when served cold, with plenty of ice.

Blair cleared his throat. He was still frowning, but at the tea now, not at Jim. "So when did you spend time in the South?"

"Fort Bragg, stationed there for a while," Jim said. "Thank God for the beer, or I might not have made it out of there alive."

"Wait, what?" Blair's eyebrows were up again, getting a nice little workout. "You don't like this stuff? Mr. Sugar-Glazed Buttermilk Doughnut?"

Jim huffed a little. "A good glazed doughnut is one thing, Sandburg. This shit" — he gestured at the steeping tea — "is another thing entirely. Not my cup of tea."

Blair squeezed his eyes shut as if in pain. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that." He opened his eyes to glare at Jim. "Terrible puns aside —you don't like this stuff, but you're taking it to the barbecue. Why?.... Oh." Blair narrowed his eyes. "You don't think anybody else will like it, either, do you, since nobody in the department's from the South?" Blair's hands made some kind of convoluted "I'm right, I know I am" gesture. His eyes narrowed even more. "Everybody's going to be expecting you to bring beer and soda, and you show up with this. You're still pissed off about Shellman's joke last week, aren't you?"

"I warned him," Jim said. He had.

"And you're going to make everybody else suffer for it, too?"

Jim shrugged. "They all laughed, Chief."

"It was _funny,_ Jim," Blair said. "And I can say that, since I was the butt of it."

Jim shrugged again. "Anybody makes a joke at your expense, Sandburg, it's going to be me."

Blair stared at him. "Okay," he said slowly, "yeah, you don't have any problems making jokes at my expense. But —"

"But nothing," Jim interrupted. "We're friends. I don't appreciate my friends getting the short end of the stick, is all."

"We're friends," Blair said, even more slowly than before.

Jim rubbed the side of his neck, working out a sudden, unexpected knot of tension. "Where are you going with this, Sandburg? If you don't think we're friends —"

"No, we're friends," Blair said. "Of course we're friends, Jim. I just… I wonder sometimes, you know…" 

No, Jim didn't know, and Blair wasn't helping matters any, having trailed off into silence.

"Wonder what?" Jim found himself asking. Which was a mistake, he was perfectly well aware of that. Wondering what Blair was wondering about, under circumstances like this — whatever the hell the circumstances actually were, Jim wasn't exactly sure — was definitely a mistake.

Blair's jaw worked, and he looked away from Jim. Looked at the clock, clearly, since he grimaced and —thank God — changed the subject. "How long do you steep that tea, anyway?"

Jim glanced at the clock himself. "Not this long," he said with a grimace of his own. "Doesn't matter, though. It'll just add to the overall effect."

"Great," Blair said. "You know, you can be a real jerk sometimes." He shook his head. "How were you planning on keeping somebody from making an end run out to a convenience store, anyway?"

"I'm not sadistic, Chief. Fifteen minutes in this heat and everybody will have at least tasted the tea. That's all I ask."

"Not to mention you _want_ somebody to bring in some beer, so you don't get stuck drinking this stuff yourself."

Jim raised an eyebrow. "Who says I wasn't planning on tossing a cooler into Sweetheart anyway? For the worthy."

"Of course you were," Blair said, rolling his eyes. "Right. Absolutely. The worthy being…?"

"Me," Jim said. "Simon, since he's the boss. Joel, since he's the host. Not sure who else, yet."

"Whoa," Blair said. "Not me? Come on, man. I am not drinking your tea."

Jim pulled out another shrug — good thing he spent a lot of time at the gym, the way he was working his shoulder muscles today — and said, "Make it worth my while, and we'll see."

"Hey, I was the victim here," Blair protested. When Jim remained silent, merely adding an "I'm waiting" tilt to the eyebrow he'd already raised, Blair frowned. "No tests on your senses for a week?" he offered. Jim stayed silent. "Two weeks?"

Jim still stayed silent. Who knew how far Blair would go with this, after all? Even if what Jim was _really_ interested in wasn't on the table.

"I buy you Wonderburgers for lunch for a week and don't give you the 'arterial blockage on a bun' spiel even once?" Blair's frown deepened when Jim didn't respond. "I'm laying out some good stuff here, Jim. Give me a break. What are you waiting for, an offer for a blow job?"

Which was a completely rhetorical question, it had to be.

Although, since Blair's face had suddenly turned bright pink and he'd frozen in place — except for a couple of convulsive swallows — maybe it wasn't quite so rhetorical after all. Especially since Blair's shorts seemed to be just a little tighter in the crotch area than they'd been a few minutes ago. Not that Jim had been keeping that close an eye on Blair's crotch, of course.

Until now.

Right. 

Time for some investigation. Jim put a little overt challenge into his expression, although he wasn't sure who he was challenging, Blair or himself. "Make that a package deal, Chief, and you're on," he said.

The pink brightening Blair's cheeks notched up in intensity. "Cute, Jim," he said. "That's cute. You really think —" He stopped himself and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he'd put enough challenge of his own into his gaze to up the ante Jim had just set. "You really think I would blow you for a beer?"

_Game on._ Jim felt his lips quirk into a half-smile. "Maybe not one, but two or three? Cold ones, on a day like this? Sure, who wouldn't?"

Blair proceeded to ignore Jim's words and up the ante again with a vengeance. "You reciprocate?" he asked, his chin lifted and his eyes even more challenging.

Okay, Jim hadn't been expecting that. Point to Blair. "You calling me out?"

Blair shrugged. "Whatever it takes."

Jim hadn't expected _that,_ either, but he could roll with it. "Takes for you to get that beer? Or to get some reciprocation?" 

Blair did something with his eyebrows — some kind of waggle, almost — that should have looked ridiculous, but… didn't. Somehow. "Take your pick. Door Number Two would be more fun, though."

"You got me there, Chief. Too bad I'm looking for more than just a little fun." And hell, why was Jim shooting himself in the foot? Thirty seconds ago he would have bet a big chunk of change that a little one-on-one fun with Sandburg _was_ all he was looking for.

It had to be the tea. The goddamned stuff was beginning to smell pretty potent and definitely over-steeped and was probably releasing some kind of psychoactive chemical into the air of the loft that was screwing with Jim's ability to think straight.

"With me?" There was no mistaking the hopefulness in Blair's expression, and how the hell had they ended up here, with Jim saying, "Yeah, with you," and — Christ — actually meaning it?

The tea. It had to be the tea. And Jim hadn't even added the sugar yet.

And the smile Blair was offering Jim at the moment was too damned blinding — and sweet — for Jim's good. 

Too damned sweet. Like the tea — or like the tea would be, if Jim ever finished making it. Which, frankly, Jim was fast losing interest in. Revenge and southern iced tea might be sweet, but blow-jobs were sweeter.

Reciprocation — possible reciprocation — possible reciprocation of more than just a blow job — was sweeter, too. Even if thirty seconds ago — well, a minute ago, now — Jim hadn't even realized how much he wanted it. 

Maybe there was something good to be said about sweet tea after all. As long as you didn't have to actually drink it.

**Author's Note:**

> I live in the southern U.S., land of Sweet Tea. It's not my personal thing (maybe because I didn't grow up here), but I know people who live on the stuff, and I mean no disrespect to this noble and beloved (and, yes, _sweet_ ) beverage); Jim's anti-sweet-tea attitude in this fic bears no relationship to, well… anything, really. Definitely not to my respect for Sweet Iced Tea and the people who swear by it. (And really, Jim taking Sweet Tea to Joel's barbecue wouldn't have been a hardship for the rest of the party-goers. Jim's just being a little "If I don't like it, nobody else will either." As one does, sometimes.)


End file.
